ATW in 45. #29

Sunday. We are not going to church. Our plans include a tour of Canalques National Park, only. Tour starts at 230. So, rhat means one thing: sleep in. All the way to 930!! Still very nice and we need sleep. Showered, dressed, ready.

Staying in hotels has its perks. Here, free breakfast. And this is France, breakfastbis a solid meal. This is no La Quinta in the interstate in Omaha. We get real food and good coffee. I love the food here. And the way everyone sits around for an hour to eat it. Never a rush. Well, breakfast was packed. But I still got my croissant, roll, coffee and juice. And a couple hard eggs. We ate our fill.

After breakfast, about 1145, we checked out. We stored our bags in the luggage room and headed to the old city. The port area. Vieux Marseille. An easy downhill walk of about 20 minutes. Sorry Ed. We had decided to check out the fort and other old monument buildings prior to the tour. We also purchased tickets for the tour in advance.

Then off to the nether parts of the old port battlements. What’s another couple miles of walking now? I mean we pound it out every day. Of course, the temp is over 90 and humidity is high but we can tough that out.

All around us are hundreds of cops. World Cup final is tonight, France v Croatia. I guess the cops expect trouble. All the food and bev locations are getting r asybearly for the crowds. And more people are coming down to the port with each passing minute. It’s gonna be a madhouse.

So we wandered around the port for about two hours. Then we had a quick snack. Everyone’s favorite mussels and frites. The cafe sells them for €7.9 which is like free. And it was a generous serving. We ate quick since we had a tour, as I mentioned.

We headed over to the quay right after our quick lunch. We got in line for the boat early enough to get seats of our choice. If I forgot to mention this is a boat tour, sorry. It’s a not tour. About 3 hours long. Like the SS Minnow.

There were about 50 passengers on the boat. Not crowded. We were sitting up top by the bridge. The port of Marseille has thousands of pleasure craft which are moored right around where our tour boat is moored. It’s a hell of a lot of boats. Took ten minutes to pass all by as we went out to open water. There were a couple cruise ships moored in another area of the port. The port is large.

The boat went out the port and headed east along the coast. There were a lot of day sailors out and quite a few sea doos playing in the wake of all passing boats. We continued down the coast for about an hour and a half. The boat came in close to the coast to show off anything interesting like old buildings, beaches, secluded coves. Down the coast there were a few coves with small town-like habitations there. They seem like small resorts. I think I could spend a summer sitting around one. The water is beautiful and warm. Beaches are rocky, which seems to deter no one.

We continued on this course. And turned around at about the 1.5 hour mark. Our trip back was much faster – nothing to stop for. Took a little over an hour for the return.

When we returned the port area was kickin. More people by 10 fold, same for the cops. We decided to go have a drink or snack. We ended up stopping at Glacier that also served Paella. Weird combo but all the food and ice cream was tasty. We sat for a while watching the wild people watching the Cup final. Crazy. But we have a plane to catch and wanted to be out of the city before the end of what appeared to be a French win. So we are and walked back to the hotel, uphill.

I had order an Uber that morning for trip to the airport. So we just sat at the hotel in air conditioned comfort till he showed. A couple of us, not me, drank beer while we waited.

Driver showed just at the point where the game ended. You have heard the phrase “and the crowd went wild”? They did. We could hear and feel the city from inside the taxi. It was crazy. I saw online what it looked like in Paris. This was a much smaller more personal level but still crazy.

Trip to Marseille airport was 20 minutes, without incident. After the day, kind of a letdown. No matter. Uber was on bonus time so I had to pay 1.9x for our ride. Losers.

We sat around the airport quite awhile. Had dinner and sat some more. The ticket counter was closed at Vueling so it did not matter. We got in line, first, and waited for them to show. About an hour. No one wasnin any big hurry since the flight was delayed over an hour. Leisurely pace.

They finally got their shit together and checked us in and gave out boarding passes. So we went through security and sat down and waited at the gate. Ours was the only departure so the terminal was mostly empty. The airline did not make any announcements regarding the delay. We just waited.

After forever, we finally got loaded and are now in the air on our way to Barcelona. It’s after midnight and I imagine we will be in our hotel by 2am. I hope.

Flight took about an hour. Got to get one bag and a taxi or Uber to the hotel. I can hardly wait for sleep.

Bag took a half hour. Because Vueling is a complete piece of crap airline. Also, Vueling arrivals unload to a bus. No gate service. Piece of crap airline. I hate them. It’s 230 am and I am in the taxi queue with my fam. All tired, hot and sweaty. No love available. Looks like another 15 mins for a taxi.

Why no Uber? I tried. No one on God’s green earth knew where the pickup spot was. The driver did. I spoke to him. He spoke Spanish and French and Arabic. I spoke English. He wanted me to go to VTC. Where? Worked poorly. No one inside airport could help me.

What to do? Regular taxi. That was a walk and a half to get to the taxi stand. Got there. One hundred people in front of us. And a virtual army of cabs. We had to wait about ten minutes for a ride. But we got one. Now the adventure truly begins. We drove into a Barcelona. Close to 3am now. We are all tired. Very tired.

We got to the “hotel” by 315. Well, I need a code to get in. I have no code. It’s late. I let these people. I phone the number on the door. Disconnected. I phone the number in my confirmation. No answer. I was the only one out of the cab. We ended up with the cab driver taking us from hotel to hotel till we found one with a room available. The cab driver even got out of the cab to speak to hotel clerks and store owners to help find a room. Awesome driver. Two rooms actually. City rules, only 2 persons to a room. So we got two rooms. By the way, Travelocity does not answer their phone in the middle of the night. We did finally get two rooms in the hotel Regina. Nice place. At 4 am I don’t care. I went directly to bed. After calling the other hotel and Travelocity, again, just for purposes of self abuse.